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'Spine' review or 'Don't judge a book and all that.'

Spine, Clara Brennan

Soho Theatre, 22nd October 2014

‘Spine’ is really quite cheesy
in parts. It is a one-woman show about a troubled teenager, Amy, who gets
kicked out of home and ends up befriending a tough old biddy. The two might be
worlds apart but they have a lot to learn from each other. It sounds a little twee, doesn’t it? But Clara
Brennan’s free flowing script practically rattles with energy – as if the
characters are trying to burst free of the text - and Rosie Wyatt’s performance
is one of the fiercest yet most gentle performances I have seen all year.

There’s a peculiar intensity
to Wyatt’s performance right from the off. The small upstairs studio at Soho
Theatre grows thick with concentration and suspense, in a way that only happens
at the theatre. Wyatt is deep inside the show from the off and so, in turn, are
we.

This is an actress with natural
theatrical instinct. She moves about the stage as if it had a million invisible
little spaces we mere mortals cannot see. The set, designed by Alison
Neighbour, is simple – just a few crates and bundles full of books, which
creates a playground for Amy to roam about in. When Amy is at the pub, that
modest little stage fills with the bustling energy of her bolshy friends. When
Amy is at home with her depressed mum and bemused step-dad, she looks somehow
isolated – despite the fact it is always just Wyatt alone on stage throughout
this electric one-woman show. When Amy meets widow Glenda the space seems to
open out, as Amy climbs up and around the piles of books and her horizons literally
and figuratively expand.

It’s not just the space that
Wyatt commands with such instinct – it is also her voice. Wyatt is helped in
this respect by Brennan’s script which motors and tumbles along at a remarkably
instinctive – character led – pace. You only need to look at the script, full
of pauses and capital letters and great long paragraphs and rows of stuttered
short text to understand how alive this writing is and what a gift it might
prove to the right type of actress.

Wyatt is propelled forward by
Brennan’s script, tumbling through the angry bits, freezing at the moments of
shock and slowly, slowly, reaching some sort of manageable pace, as Amy begins
to feel appreciated and loved and stops running; starts listening and learning
and even reading some books. This pacing is such a crucial part of the show.
The angry freneticism of the early scenes plunges one into the tumult of the
teenage years, when life feels a lot like is a weird and manic race, the finish
line nowhere in sight.

Bethany Pitts keeps the
production low key and it is left to Brennan’s script and Wyatt’s sheer force of
personality to keep the show running and sparking in all the right places.
Brennan is seriously good at summoning up complete scenes – and rich characters
– with just a few carefully picked phrases. This allows Wyatt, as Amy, to pack
the stage with life in an instant. We hear about Amy’s mother who has ‘too much
water’ and is sad all the time and her hunched body quickly materialises on
stage. We hear about Wyatt’s sleezy boyfriend, who slaps her vagina after they
have sex for the first time and cries out triumphantly, ‘Ah OWN that pussy!’
There’s such vibrancy to Brennan’s dialogue that it only takes a second for her
imagined characters to wriggle on stage and into our heads.

And then there is the old
biddy herself, Glenda. What is interesting and moving is how smooth the
transition feels from Wyatt’s chest-thrusting, aggressive Amy to the bent over
widow Glenda, who despairs of the ‘posh cock club’ politicians who have slowly
dismantled the Britain she hoped for – and that her husband once fought for –
in front of her eyes. There is otherness that binds these two together – a ‘beautiful
anger’ – that lights up them and the show from within.